So, I’ve had my hands on an iPad for about two and a half weeks now. It may not sound like the biggest deal in the world, but I live in Canada and the iPad isn’t bound for release up here for a few more weeks. (no I didn’t run to the states to pick it up.)

My first impressions were that it’s a very fancy web surfing machine that is, actually, quite nice to bum around the web on. You get a very “Minority Report” vibe from some of the ways you can interact with it. The size is actually kind of…  sort of, halfway large once you get it in your hands and start using it. I use a 13-inch screen laptop 75% of the time and I somehow feel I get the same amount of screen real-estate in some strange way. But, that’s all about the usability of the device, itself. It’s a device designed by Jonathan Ive, it was always going to look amazing and be nice to use and none of that was ever really in question. To doubt Ive’s design capacity would be like saying that Valve Software is working on an A-list gaming title and it is somehow suspect to flopping.

The big thing that has kept me using it every spare few minutes I have is the alternate, more subversive implied use for this device that I think is going to really open up a whole side of modern day digitization. It’s the way you can view and subscribe to content that was normally only available in print or awkward websites. I’m talking about Magazines, Newspapers, Journals and the like. This thing could very well be the digital answer that print has been looking for. Because, lets face it: print is dying. Publishing a Newspaper or Magazine this day in age is a very, very, difficult space to be in right now and you even hint that there is some kind of reliable future in that space is just laughable.

A lot of the tech-aware Mags and Papers have made a serious effort to move online and have at least a digital end with a website or a mobile app or, in some rare cases, a desktop client or email newsletter on the extremely lazy end. But, the younger publications that have emerged from this new digital era of shared media have pretty much embraced the web and digital distribution out of the necessity or constraints of the internet. These publications are just now breaking the threshold of being respectable sources of information and often can operate and compete on a platform with traditional print media and can how stand shoulder to shoulder with old printed companies and say with complete confidence: “This is a digital age. Our industry is about to erupt into a large digital model and we should have, nay, NEED to have a proper, full featured device to experience our content on. It’s worked for video and especially for music. We need to get our act together.”

I’ve played with a Kindle and I’ve seen many reviews of Sony’s ereader and they all seem to have the shortcomings of the mobile market pre-iphone. All they do is read books. Like, novels, not mags or papers. And I honestly think that novels are going to stay fairly comfortable in the physical medium. Novels are a bit of a niche market to begin with and almost every last customer in that space loves their books. They love the feel, the smell, the weight and the way the form walls in a collection. I don’t think that has any shot of changing any time soon, or at least in the next ten years until some radical new way to READ a book is presented.

But magazines? I have a box of mags in my brother’s closet that him and I will never touch again. I do not regret spending money on them and on many issues of Keyboard Player, Computer Music and Electronic Musician I am really glad I parted with the ten dollars to explore the information put in there by the writers and editors of that title. But once you read an issue, the paper becomes a waste of space. It always has and would continue to be if it weren’t for the recent efforts to build a device to carry this kind of content. In full colour with dynamic, imbedded media and contextual linkage on a device small enough to put into a backpack or carry bag, but big enough to hold on your lap and read like a modest sized magazine.

The iPad is going to be the little black & silver rectangle that will sit on your coffee table that you will pick up like you would the newspaper or a magazine and flip through stories and articles like you would do normally, but there’s nothing to waste or throw away while the same content providers you enjoyed in print would continue to thrive and deliver you the same quality content you have come to enjoy. Or, at least they will, if they’re smart.

I know this because that’s exactly what I’ve been doing with this thing for two and a half weeks. I go to my desk during lunch, throw down my sandwich, take a sip of my coffe and then flick on the iPad and launch the Digg App and read magazine articles.  (and also read comics from Marvel’s comic reader app, that, I cannot say enough good things about. it is a JOY to use. I could write a whole post just about that little piece of software. If you haven’t given it a go, I suggest that you do.)

Oh yeah, and this thing does all the other stuff the iPhone does, too. And that’s turned out to be a bit of a half-way successful feature-set.